


Autumn in London

by HolmesianDeduction



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Audiosensitivity, Gen, Hypersensitivity, Mania, Manic-Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 20:53:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HolmesianDeduction/pseuds/HolmesianDeduction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sherlock Holmes goes from the agonisingly pale days of lethargy and boredom back into himself, before he is able to throw himself back into his work, he faces a single obstacle in the form of a full week of agonising hypersensitivity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Autumn in London

             John Watson watches from the kitchen as his flatmate stares fixedly at the curtained window.  He thinks during this time that Sherlock is thinking.  That the gears are turning on some intricate problem that involves hundreds of individual factors, none of which are the solar system.

             John Watson is wrong.

             Sherlock Holmes is staring fixedly at the window, willing the bare branch on the other side to somehow curve itself so that it stops scratching against the glass.  Sherlock Holmes is wondering _why_  John can’t _hear_  the wretched noise, and if he can, why isn’t he _reacting_?

             Each gust of cool autumn wind sends a fresh jolt of pain through Sherlock’s brain.  Somewhere it dimly registers that he should not be able to hear the branch’s travels along the surface of the glass, and he discards the thought.  In a week, he knows, he will no longer hear it, or at least not like this.  Not with each tiny movement searing a permanent scar into his brain with a hot poker.

              _I should have opened the window and amputated the limb myself the moment I felt the colours coming back._

             He had known it would happen, and it did.  All the colours flooded back at once and it had been sensory overload.  Everything was too bright and too loud and _unbearable._   Fighting the urge to vomit, he pushed his hands through his hair violently, his fingernails digging at his scalp and distracting, at least for a moment, from the branch outside.

             Finally, John decided that he had seen enough, and standing in the doorway, offered the only relief he could imagine from whatever was plaguing the other man.  “Do you want to pop out for a bit?  Get a bit of fresh air?”

             Sherlock looked at the other man blankly.   _Why,_  his gaze seemed to ask, _on earth would you suggest such a thing?  Don’t you know what will happen if I go out there?  The moment a traffic light turns blindingly red and an angry cabbie lays on his car horn and sends every part of my carefully articulated mind shattered and reeling into a thousand tiny fragments?  Don’t you know?_

             But John Watson doesn’t know, _can’t_ know, and so he stares back into the wild, half-feral eyes of the man with whom he shares a home with an almost innocent lack of understanding until, sighing, Sherlock Holmes turns away and allows his body to curl in on itself as if it were an ouroboros made of blue silk and curls rather than scales.

__  
             Just one week.  



End file.
